Diminished
by Asphodelium
Summary: Danny and Sam's only child suffers from genetic defects brought on by her parentage, Jack suffers through the guilt of knowing he's to blame for her condition, and Danny and Sam's marriage begins to break down. Who can guess what the future will hold for any of them, when they can each barely manage getting through the day?
1. Jack

**Author's Note:** If I even tried to explain the source of this idea, you would stare at me like I'd lapsed into Mandarin. Just let me know if this warrants continuation, it's better as a oneshot or if it's such a bucket of angst it should be rewritten entirely. I kind of want to go through a character-by-character reaction to the whole situation, but I fully understand this premise could turn into wangst in a heartbeat. I'm open to all criticism, comments and suggestions anyone has on this.

* * *

Jack stared at his only grandchild, frowning thoughtfully.

She stared back with silvery eyes, looking pained, curled up, her cries quiet and choked. It was like she didn't have the breath to form proper screams like other babies. Her skin was literally white as snow, and her chin length hair was pale gray. She was unearthly and unnatural. She barely ate, slept almost ceaselessly, and didn't have the strength to crawl yet despite being eleven months old. The doctors had more or less given up trying to understand her when Danny and Sam decided they didn't want a media circus around their only child. She had been born like this, ghostly, sickly and strange, and showed no signs of miraculously changing into a normal child overnight. Danny and Sam's fairytale romance had turned from a dream into a nightmare the day she came whimpering and shivering into the world.

And all of it was Jack's fault.

If he hadn't insisted on dragging Danny down to the lab, the ectoplasmic radiation would never have effected his DNA. If he hadn't constantly had Danny around the portal, his son would have produced normal children, and everything would be okay. If he only had thought to test it for leakage, make sure it was truly safe, this little girl wouldn't be laying there like a ragdoll struggling to cry out to him. No wonder Jazz hadn't had children of her own, no wonder Danny had always skipped periods of high school and seemed so sickly. He'd come home time after time looking like he'd been beaten up from the inside out, and Jack hadn't ever put it together. The ghosts running around might have a small ectoplasmic and radioactive signature, but Danny was living next to the world's biggest generator of both _during puberty_. Jazz had escaped the drain on her health by being fully developed, and he and Maddie were immune from their college age experiments in the field, but...

A soft cry interrupted his thoughts. Jack swallowed back a wave of emotions and gently picked her up. She weighed next to nothing, like a kitten. The Fenton Ghost Detector had been switched off long ago, as it went off like crazy whenever she was in the house. It didn't understand the difference between someone suffering the ghostly equivalent of radiation poisoning and an actual ghost. She laid her head against his chest, looking tired. He wasn't sure why she cried when she did, but it usually seemed to be out of pain, which was the same reason she didn't stand or try to crawl anymore. It hurt her unnaturally long legs and though she couldn't voice it, she would lay down and cry until she ran out of silent tears.

"It's alright, sweetie. I've got you," he told her, closing his eyes as the guilt hit him. _I did this to you. You should be crawling and learning to say 'dada' or 'mama' and instead I did _this_ to you..._

She nuzzled into him, her hair soft and fluffy. It had the same strange volume to it Sam's did, despite being short. He wondered what she would look like if he hadn't been such an idiot. Her hair would be black, wouldn't it? Black and shiny. Maybe she'd have gotten Danny's blue eyes. The other day he'd heard Danny and Sam arguing, not over the eye color itself, exactly, but over what they were going to _do_ about her eyes. Devoid of pigment, they were unable to absorb light correctly, and doctors were united in their opinion that she should by all rights be blind. How she wasn't already was a miracle, but not one they expected to be sustainable. If something wasn't done, she was going to be blind by kindergarten at the latest.

He carried her into the kitchen, where he could get her something to drink. She was always desperately thirsty, and when her parents were busy, it was up to Maddie to watch her. In theory. In reality she was even more aware than Jack of how much _their_ fault this was (_his_, it was his, he'd been the one to purpose a second portal, what had he been _thinking_) and some days she just couldn't do it. She couldn't look at Lilith, couldn't even say her name without getting choked up. So Jack expertly filled a bottle with cool water, which Lilith could at least grasp with some initial help, and as she drank he watched her silver eyes. They seemed focused and sharp enough to him, taking in the details of the room, blinking at normal intervals, but some part of him waited for the day he stared at her and she was unable to stare back.

They could surgically change the color of her eyes. It was new technology, but it could be done. There was even an ability to pick the color, it would only take an hour, and it had a chance of saving her sight. It was mostly in use for people with other ocular defects, though the science was the same. The problem was Danny and Sam disagreed very strongly on implementing it. Danny was all for it. Sam thought he was insane to put their little girl through inhumane surgery before she was old enough to walk. They'd have to redo it repeatedly as Lilith grew, as well, but Danny didn't want her to go blind and - it was a nightmare. Their arguing over it had ended with Lilith in Jack's care while Sam went to stay with her parents and Danny went to a psychologist Jazz had recommended. He needed it; the strain of having a fragile baby like this out of the blue had taken its toll.

"Your Daddy will be back soon, Lilypants," Jack told her quietly, and smiled when her nose crinkled. She still didn't respond well to the nickname, but she _did_ respond to stimulus in a way that doctors assured him meant she wasn't mentally impeded. "He just needs to work some things out. Guess you're stuck with Grandpa Jack in the meantime."

Truth be told, Jack had been contemplating therapy, himself. Night after night he'd stayed up, pacing, thinking about what he'd done. Day after day, he watched her try to get up, even though she knew it would hurt, because she was her mother's daughter and she didn't give up. She'd grip the bars of her crib and pull herself up, try to stay that way, knees locking and soft voice grunting. Some days he felt like breaking the barrier of media silence and telling the world how brave she was, how she was still going when they hadn't thought she'd last a month, how all the doctors were wrong and she was going to be okay. Sometimes he had nightmares she'd died in her sleep and he had to rush to check and make sure she was okay.

At the rate Danny and Sam were going it wasn't clear if their marriage was going to survive. Jack knew _that_ was his fault, too. If he hadn't done this to their child...

He wondered if that was why they left her with him so often. Maybe it was a fitting punishment for someone who'd crippled a child like this. Danny hadn't ever addressed the issue, just telling Jack it wasn't his fault, telling him there was nothing to talk about, but he had to be aware it was his father's invention that had done this. He had to know his father was the reason his daughter had been spent the first two months of her life in intensive care. Maybe he hated him. Maybe, Jack thought as he took the empty bottle from Lilith, that was completely and utterly fair.

It wasn't her fault her parents yelled at each other more than they talked. It was _his_ and he knew it. Surgeries, doctors, physical therapy, examinations - what was too much? What if it wasn't enough? Was she going to make it without Danny monitoring her every cough, or was she going to be alright if they treated her like a normal child as Sam insisted? What were they supposed to do? Even Jack didn't have a clear idea of the future. He feared the future, now. He took things one day, one hour at a time. He couldn't picture her possibly needing physical therapy when she was two because if he tried to figure out whether a survivor of ectoplasmic radiation could live to make it to two, he wanted to break down and cry. In trying to plan the future, Danny and Sam were driving themselves to madness, unable to even agree on things as simple as whether to get her on a schedule or not. It killed him. If he hadn't dragged Danny into the ghost hunting business, he wouldn't be miserable, wouldn't be sobbing it out in therapy every week for an hour. _What have I done? My God, what have I _done_?_

"I love you, Lil," he whispered, walking back to her room where the windows were covered to block out the harsh light. When he laid her down she grabbed at his shirt, and he had to gently detangle her long, thin fingers from the fabric. "I know. I'll stay until you fall asleep, just like always."

When he took his place in the chair beside her crib, she laid down, shifting her legs until she found a position that didn't hurt. Then they waited, quietly, for sleep to come. When it did, it found Jack first, exhausted and slumped in his chair. She watched him with her ghostly eyes for what, from her perspective, seemed like a long time. In as much as a baby could understand time or people, she understood he was the one there the most often. As she drifted off to the familiar sound of him snoring, she drew a deep breath, and said her first word.

"Gran... pa..."


	2. Sam

**Author's Note:** So Sam is running a bit ragged here, but please don't hate her. She's just trying to deal with some trauma and, unless you yourself have been a mother to a child with special needs, I really don't think you have a right to declare her incompetent or bad, here.

That said, thank you for the outpouring of reviews and encouragement for an idea I was sure I'd get slammed for. I know that OCs who are children of the main cast can be written poorly and I know inflicting an unhappy ending on the entire cast is a mean spirited idea. I would understand fully anyone who reads this and dislikes it. But so far I've received feedback that says I should at least keep going, and I intend to, although I'm still nervous about the concept. Thank you to everyone for reading this. Even if it's not your kind of fic, at least you gave it a chance, and that's what I love about this fandom: we will try anything once.

* * *

Sam felt like she was living a nightmare.

She had been running on fear for what felt like forever. From the moment the ultrasounds had shown a baby half the size it should be, she'd been worried. She'd even eaten meat when Tucker laid out in no uncertain terms what nutrients her body needed. She hated the taste, hated the idea of where it came from, hated every meal, but she felt like it was her fault. She hadn't been eating right and now her baby was so small the doctors weren't even sure it was going to make it through to be born. Sam downed vitamins and chewed through chicken in desperate hope to improve things, all while Danny told her not to worry. The baby had a stable heartbeat and it was growing. So what if they had a short kid? Things were going to be okay. That was what he kept saying, over and over again.

He had the _audacity_ to say it when Lilith was born and the doctors and nurses fell silent, and Sam, through a haze of pain (_no painkillers, they can have residual effects on the baby and MY daughter isn't getting any of them_) had pushed herself into sitting up on her elbows, sweat covered and in a state of panic she had never known before. She'd asked what was wrong. Danny had said everything was okay. She knew from experience that meant something was horribly wrong. Okay was the word he used when he was injured, when he was failing a college class, when he'd just averted the latest ghostly crisis. Okay made her world break down.

And then she saw her daughter.

Gasping, tiny breaths escaped her oddly proportioned body, defying her lifeless looking white skin, whiter than was human, whiter than was possible. Even a dead baby should be pink or blue from veins, but she was otherworldly, drained of even that pigment. She didn't cry, didn't kick and scream, just gasped out for air, eyes wide open like she was in the worst pain imaginable. She screamed with her silver eyes. They begged Sam to help her, to make the pain go away, to make it all _stop_.

Sam _couldn't_. She couldn't do a thing for her daughter. She couldn't even hold her. The doctors swept her away in a rush of calmly controlled expertise, Dr. Enlai assuring her that he hadn't lost a baby yet and didn't intend to. He had put her in a device resembling a cage or, to Sam's Gothic mind, a tomb of glass, making sure purer oxygen was pumped in and her vitals were monitored. Outside her mother, her heart didn't seem capable at first of functioning without another heart pumping it along, and she laid there, helpless. There was nothing to be done but wait and see if her condition would improve. She'd already been born early.

That was half the problem, Sam's body spasming and rejecting the inhuman baby, refusing to carry for nine months something it recognized only as a foreign entity. She knew in her heart and in her mind that this was her daughter, her baby girl, Danny's child, their little one, but her biology only saw it as a growth, an invasive creature to be repelled. Six months in and Lilith had been thrown out as Sam cried, unable to keep her in even though she _knew_ premature births were risky. She'd cried the whole way to the hospital as her father's smiling face had turned pale and stony. He had been there before Danny had, holding her hand as the doctors tried to administer drugs to stop the premature labor. Everything had failed and by the time Danny had gotten there Lilith was well on her way, and Sam was beyond consoling. She tried with everything there was in her to put mind over matter and stop, she fought the urge to push, she didn't want to do this to her daughter and-

"Things are going to be okay," Danny said, reaching out to touch the palest baby ever born, and Sam had known then things would never be okay again.

When they finally got home, Sam had more or less retreated to her room. Danny kept asking her if she wanted to talk, but there was nothing to say. There was literally nothing she could come up with... right up until someone in the hospital staff had leaked the news of the 'ghost baby'. Then Sam had put on her finest, nicest corp-Goth clothes, used her inheritance money from her parents and begun to sue everyone and everything that moved, calling out entire groups on their unethical practices and shutting down the local news station altogether after launching no less than three private investigators after them, who had all found illegal dealings going on inside the company. Sam had found something to talk about: just how much she was going to destroy anyone who tried to turn her little girl into a sideshow freak. She started a blog that ripped reporters a new one, ending careers with her criticism, spending hours trawling through online archives to gather proof these people were idiots and money seekers who had no authenticity to speak of. Hell had no fury like a mother angered.

Still, the news got out, and there were reporters out and boldly waiting as Sam and Danny took their baby girl home. Dr. Enlai had provided a distraction by flipping several reporters off and telling them they symbolized everything wrong with America, but it hadn't been enough to keep focus off of their baby. Amity Park citizens were terrified. Pregnant mothers went to doctors in droves, seeking second and third opinions, not wanting a 'ghost girl' of their own. Nevermind that Sam had been the only person in history to have a baby like this, nevermind that Dr. Enlai spent months on television debunking the myths surrounding Lilith, nevermind that unless Vlad had biological children this event was unlikely to ever repeat itself. The world had found a freak and they circled like vultures to cackle, point and whisper into the camera in hushed, dramatic tones.

All the while Danny was busy fighting ghosts, Sam was busy fighting the overwhelming desire to break down because this was not a freak, this was not a sideshow, this was her _daughter_, her _baby_ and she couldn't protect her. She couldn't keep her safe. She couldn't even hear her cry without staying in the room with her. She required constant care and vigilance, which Sam's parents offered to help provide, but she shoved them away after her mother made the mistake of referring to Lilith as 'it'. Her father visited, often with toys, reminding Sam to eat or sleep, but he was afraid to touch his grand daughter. He treated her like she was made of glass and if he so much as looked at her the wrong way she would break into a thousand pieces. He wasn't disgusted like Pamela was, but he was afraid, uncertain in what was new territory for everyone.

Eventually she had to go back to work. The law firm needed her and, everyone but Sam agreed, she needed to get back into the world and life. So she left Lilith with Maddie and Jack, the only people besides Danny she trusted with her child, and went back to work. It was not, however, the same as it had been before. People who used to chat with her avoided her. Her firm manager was unfairly lenient with her, sympathetic, and she hated him for looking at her with pity when nothing was wrong. Her daughter was fine, she was just different. Coworkers avoided asking Sam normal questions about her family life and she fought back by defiantly placing pictures of her all over her desk, so people could look and see the little girl with her blankie or smiling at the camera or holding onto her toy sheep like any other child in the world.

And then there was Danny with his constant reassurances everything would be okay as he fought off ghosts, specifically Skulker, whose newfound interest in Lilith scared both parents to the core. Sam wanted to scream at him that things were fine and he wasn't helping by bringing it up every four seconds. She wanted to break down sobbing when Lilith stopped breathing one night and they had to call the paramedics, she wanted to shove it in Danny's face when at one year old Lilith finally learned basic words when he'd been worried she was never going to speak, she wanted to punch Jack for not telling her when Lilith's first steps had been in his home and more than anything she wanted to stop and breathe, but there was just no time.

Lilith walked. She stomped, unsubtle, hands curled up tight to fight off pain, forcing herself forward, stumbling time and time again, and her eyes narrowed to snake like slits, but she never gave up. She responded well to visual tests as if her very body was defying the expectations of the world around her, she seemed to have better hearing than average, and when Danny wanted to have her eyes operated on or her ears examined thoroughly Sam just _lost_ it, screaming at him and asking what exactly was wrong with her just the way she was. She didn't need physical therapy, she didn't need contacts, she didn't need her hair dyed, she didn't need to be like everyone else because Sam loved her just like she was.

"And you think I don't?" he shot back, clutching at his hair.

"Sometimes I wonder!" she snapped, wishing she could take the words back at the look that crossed his face. Then he phased out of visibility and left, just turned and quit dealing with it.

Which she would do, if she could, and she did. She dropped Lilith off at Jack and Maddie's, where she greeted them with "Grandpa!" and "Mads!", a habit she'd picked up from Jack, and they smiled at her like she was any other kid in the world. Sure, she'd learned to walk later than most kids, but only by three months. At eighteen months she was up and running, parroting words softly, her quick steps unsteady but her eyes bright and shining. She was alive, she wasn't dying, she wasn't going to lay there and give up no matter how much it must have hurt those first few months to learn to stand, stretching unused muscles, clinging to couches and table legs to pull herself up until she learned. And if she could walk when she wasn't supposed to live through the night, then she could do anything she damn well pleased. Even if it took her longer, even if it was harder, she wasn't going to give up.

As her daughter learned colors and the names of furniture from her in-laws, Sam took four Xanax and passed out at her parent's house in her old bed, too tired to even cry, dreading the moment she woke up, knowing she'd still be as helpless to change anything as she had been before she went to sleep.


End file.
